08:40, Tuesday 22 Jul., 2003 Link

Understanding use through mythology: "user mythology is a set of received or generated knowledge based on the experiences of a user base. a user base can be one person or the entire user community of a product. users create stories about their experiences in the often inscrutable world of computers and the internet all the time. those stories are refined, reformed, and passed on in accordance with how well they explain what the computer is doing, and how best to handle it. for instance, a computer that is swapping is often perceived to be 'thinking very hard'. both novice and expert computer users, even those who know a computer does nothing close to the process of thought, will interpret a swapping or slowed computer as thinking very hard. this metaphor is so useful it often supplants known factual data- namely that computers don't think". Good!